Not Moving During Chi Sau

Many people when they are practising Chi Sau 黐手 do not move their feet. This is not very good because when doing Chi Sau two of you stand very close to each other and in this situation it is easy to use a lot of energy. During Chi Sau we want to apply the principles of Wing Chun which is to use less energy to overcome a stronger opponent. If we are stuck in one position and cannot move backwards or forwards we will have to use more power to defend ourselves. This is the same situation as not moving our feet. The common mistake people make when doing Chi Sau is to use too much strength in their hands and miss their footwork, which we need to use to avoid our opponent’s strong attacks. However, when we have a high level in our Wing Chun training, we have good Gong Lik 功力 (internal power) then we can use that power to attack and defend without having to move our stance a lot. To be able to start to do this takes at least three years of training and being able to do Siu Lim Tao 小念頭 for at least half an hour. Then our bones will be stronger and even if we do not move our stance we can defeat our opponent or even bounce them away. Before we get to this level, the best training is to work on more footwork.